Josh Moon's favorites from 2014

From weird press conferences and board meetings to courtroom hearings and strange actions, Montgomery never ceases to provide a story.

These were my favorites, arranged in a top five, from 2014.

5. The President's Invisible Car: 2014 began with new hope at Alabama State University. New president Gwendolyn Boyd had seemingly united a fractured school, but cracks would form quickly.

During a spring board of trustees meeting, Boyd was grilled over an odd issue: her use of a university car. Boyd was receiving a stipend from ASU for a car, but had not yet purchased one. Instead, she was being escorted around campus, racking up thousands in overtime charges for a campus police officer.

The issue exposed other problems at ASU, which led to full-blown fallouts between Boyd and several board members – primarily over her lack of communication. And things would only get worse. By the end of the year, a number of trustees were openly questioning Boyd's leadership.

4. The Definition of Bingo: In a Montgomery County courtroom in September, the first legal showdown between attorneys from the attorney general's office and the legal team representing VictoryLand owner Milton McGregor went down.

It was a lesson in high-class lawyering, as McGregor's legal team picked apart the state's case. The week-long trial, which was technically over the state's request to destroy confiscated electronic bingo machines and keep seized cash, featured some of the funniest, smartest and surprising moments of the year.

But the highlight came from Circuit Court Judge William Shashy, who seemed at times to be far less interested in the definition of a kids' game than the lawyers arguing in front of him. After being presented with several large boxes containing case history to support an argument from the VictoryLand team, Shashy looked with dismay at the defense table and asked, "You don't expect me to read all of that, do you?"

3. The AIDS Pastor: I'm not sure exactly what Juan McFarland, former pastor of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, expected when he took to the pulpit one September Sunday and informed his congregation that he had used illegal drugs, slept with church members while HIV-positive, misused church funds and carried a loaded weapon in the church. But what he got, after a court fight, was the boot.

That court fight featured one of the greatest arguments in the history of the legal system.

A witness, one of the church trustees, was relaying a conversation the trustees had with McFarland about the pastor's sexual activity with members inside the church.

According to the witness, McFarland admitted to the acts, but said they never occurred in the church sanctuary.

If you learned nothing else over the last year, I hope you learned that much. Montgomery Mayor Todd Strange certainly did, when he was duped by former Montgomery Police Chief Kevin Murphy in what turned into one of the oddest press conferences in history.

The two men went back and forth in front of a crowd of about 50 citizens in the city council chambers. Questions, and sometimes insults, were shouted from the onlookers, most of whom sided with Murphy.

That press conference ended two weeks of speculation about Murphy's future and spawned another week of rumors, innuendoes and half-truths. While Murphy had the support of many in the community, it was apparent that he lacked the majority at MPD, where his fellow officers told repeated stories of a chief who was difficult and at times vindictive.

1.Take a Gamble: A few weeks back, we posted a series titled "Gambling in Alabama" on our website. Last week, we began running that 14-chapter series in the printed paper. But while the series has been available to you for the past month, it's been with me since last January.

That's when my editor, Tom Clifford, asked me one afternoon while we were sitting in his office to explain why grown men were fighting over the definition of bingo and why the Poarch Creek Indians can open casinos but VictoryLand is like a functioning ghost town.

Over the last year, I have met, interviewed, joked and argued with a number of people on both sides of this issue. I've received secret emails and mysterious phone calls that would make "Deep Throat" seem like a braggart.